subject: Using A Task Slipstream To Improve Your Project Planning [print this page] The best reason to plan your project is that by pre-thinking possible eventualities you can avoid un expected issues during the implementation phase. An additional benefit of project planning is that it gives you the opportunity to reflect on what you intend to do. Using a Task Slipstream is the most effective way to compress your project delivery timefames.
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Planning with your Task Slipstream
Creating your gantt chart or project plan with a Task Slipstream is quite simple to do, but requires you to think hard about your project. This is probably the reason that the technique is not used more in corporate planning environments where there is a drive to do rather than think! This approach requires you to think, think and think again before doing. It was a technique I employed whilst working at Deloitte Consulting, delivering a very time critical project. Our goal was to reduce the timeframe involved in delivering a common process by 10X.
To make this happen and numerous other projects actually happen on time and within cost constraints, I have employed the Task Slipstream approach.
To provide you with an overview of this approach, I will use a common household example, rather than a corporate project plan example. Lets assume that you have only 3 tasks as part of your project. You need to buy some milk, take the dog for a walk and post the mail. If you did each of these tasks in the normal, independent fashion, they would take half an hour each or 1.5 hours total effort, with a duration of likely more than one day. By using a Task Slipstream, you could compress the effort and duration to just half an hour, by simultaneously completing all 3 tasks. Whilst at home, this is something that you may do automatically without thinking, in the office these Slipstream opportunities can be more difficult to spot, but the DO exist.
Where to start
Start by shifting your thinking about project planning. A project plan is not just a list of tasks. It is an inter-related set of activities whose inter-relationships must be understood before commencing the delivery stage.
If you start by switching your thinking about your project plan from tasks to resources and benefits. Think about how a resource will be delivering a task, and what benefits that task will delivery. By using benefits it is possible to create a task slipstream in the business environment.
